


won't you give yourself a try?

by juggyjones



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Half-Blood Marlene, Marauders' Era, Muggle-Born Dorcas, Quidditch, james and lily live
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 13:15:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14853456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juggyjones/pseuds/juggyjones
Summary: 'From the moment he first sees her at platform nine and three-quarters, James Potter knows he’s going to marry Lily Evans.'James Potter falls in love with Lily Evans throughout their school years. It's seven years of wanting to be a better person, of seeing her hate him, of seeing her best friend exploit their war in his own benefit. It's seven years of James preparing to face the evil outside Hogwarts, growing up into a man who understands love and loss and betrayal in a way a seventeen-year-old shouldn't.When they finally join the war, he doesn't love her any less.





	won't you give yourself a try?

**Author's Note:**

> hi! i wrote this as a birthday present for one of my friends. it's basically the story of james and lily told through his perspective throughout the years. it's truthful to the canon until one point, and that's only because my friend's only condition was that i am 'not allowed to kill james and sirius'.

From the moment he first sees her at platform nine and three-quarters, James Potter knows he’s going to marry Lily Evans.

            One could say it’s fate – he isn’t meant to look in her direction. He’s headed over to the McKinnons along with his parents and they’re on the other side of the platform. James drags his trolley behind him, following in his father’s footsteps (Fleamont pretends he hasn’t noticed his son is walking just like him). He straightens his back and loosens the grip on the trolley.

            He doesn’t need to turn around because he can just grab it. But James turns around, full body, and she’s standing directly in his line of vision.

            James Potter thinks about this moment a lot. There is a girl his age, with dark red hair and face a bit puffy —she’s too far, he can’t see well—and she is talking to another girl furiously, motioning with her hands. She’s fierce, he can somehow tell, and she looks at him and from feet and feet that separate them, James thinks he can see something different in her eyes.

            That’s the moment he _knows_.

            He meets a boy minutes later, when he’s walking around the platform with the McKinnons’ daughter Marlene. Sirius Black looks exactly like someone named Sirius Black would, with freshly cut shaggy hair, and it makes James believe he looks exactly like a James Potter would. He just doesn’t know _what_ a James Potter would look like.

            Marlene says it’s the newest-brand glasses, untameable jet-black hair and a constant burst of energy.

            James doesn’t see the girl on the platform anymore. She could’ve gotten on the train early, or maybe she left – maybe it’s the other girl who’s going to Hogwarts. He doesn’t tell any of this to Sirius, but he searches until the very last compartment to find her.

            She looks at him. James looks at her.

            Her eyes look like any other, just a little red from crying.

            “Can we sit here?”

            She nods and that’s all the conversation they have. James is talking to Sirius, thinking about her and she’s staring out the window, hiccupping occasionally or sniffing. When a boy joins them, James pays him no attention – until he says the girl should be in Slytherin.

            And so James starts a war and loses her before they even exchanged a proper word. She leaves without him learning her name and it’s only when Marlene joins him and Sirius, half an hour later, that he stops being moody.

            “Girl problems,” Sirius informs her when her face falls upon the sight of sulking James.

            “Ah,” Marlene says and sits next to James. “Half an hour into the school year and you’re already a charmer.”

            James doesn’t think it’s funny but it brings a smile to his face—one simply cannot resist the McKinnon charm—and she manages to cheer him up rather quickly. When things get serious, Sirius interrupts with a snarky comment and Marlene fires back, and James is glad.

            When she’s on her way out, she stops to look at Sirius. “Your uniform could use a little cleaning. It looks like a child has sat on it.”

            Marlene leaves and Sirius mutters something under his breath. He’s got nothing on his uniform, but James feels like it’s Marlene’s payback for having to stand his comments, so he doesn’t say anything.

            Two boys join them sometime later; Marlene sent them. They’re Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew and by the time they arrive at Hogwarts, they’ve agreed to take a four-bed dorm room if they’re all going to be in the same house. Sirius’s family has got a history of Slytherin, Remus has done some research and thinks he might be in Ravenclaw, James is nearly certain he’s a Gryffindor and Peter’s just going to go with the flow.

            Still, James has a feeling the four-bed dorm room still stands.

            He’s right. They’re all Gryffindors and Marlene gets sorted in Hufflepuff, but he sees he’s happy when she waves at him from the table so he’s happy, too. The girl from the platform is a Gryffindor – Lily Evans. James makes space for her next to him, but she sits with some of the girls from their year.

            They get a four-bed dorm room. They don’t know if that’s because they wanted it, or because that’s how they are meant to sleep, but they don’t complain. It’s all settled rather quickly, as after the banquet they all drop to their beds without even taking time to unpack.

            James feels tired that night, but he can’t sleep. He thinks of Lily Evans from the platform – so much energy and excitement, and that something in her eyes he can’t recall but he remembers how it felt to be looked at like that; Lily Evans from the train – she doesn’t want to look at him unless it’s scornful, and she’s still red from crying when she leaves the compartment; and Lily Evans from the Great Hall, noticing he’s saved her a spot but actively ignoring him.

            James replays the moments. He thinks how it can’t be real, what he saw the first time they locked eyes, because all he ever saw in them after that was soft anger. He could’ve made it up.

            But he knows. That time, and every other after it, he knows it’s real.

            That night, James makes a promise to try. He’s got seven years for that.

            When he wakes up in the morning, three months have gone by and all he’s managed to do is to get her to hate him more. Now he’s certain she hates him, because every time he tries to say something she ignores him or—and that’s what he considers a success—says something snappy and bordering on rude.

            It’s not his fault Snape, that long-nosed friend of hers thinks he’s better than everyone else and reminds him of that every time they have Transfiguration together. Long gone are the times when James keeps quiet, even with her in the room, and somehow it always seems like James is the one attacking.

            Maybe it is. He truthfully can’t tell whose turn it is anymore to make it fair.

            As he sits behind her in Potions, which they thankfully don’t have with the Slytherins, he thinks a lot about what would’ve happened if he were nice to her friend, or he to James. Maybe they’d be friends already, or at least she wouldn’t look at him like she’s seen him at his worst and that’s all she keeps seeing.

            “It’s more like fascination,” he remembers telling Marlene back at the beginning of the school year. “I’m curious.”

            Marlene lowers the book she’s been reading so she could raise her eyebrows at him. “About why she hates you?”

            “No,” James says. Then thinks about it. “Yes, but that’s not all. I’m just … curious. She looks like she’d be fun to hang out with.”

            “To be fair, I’m more getting the ‘don’t get near me or I kill you’ vibes from her than ‘hey, come hang out with me!’,” replies Marlene. “C’mon, James. It’s like me and Sirius. We hate each other.”

            “No, you don’t.”

            “Yeah, we do?”

            “Huh,” James mumbles. “That’s news to me.”

            Marlene begins saying something about his sarcasm, but he gets her busy with their Astronomy homework so they don’t talk about it anymore. Until the end of the semester, they don’t talk about it at all.

            When Marlene and he talk about friends they’ve made, he tells her about Peter and Remus because she already knows about Sirius. He tells her about a girl he thinks is going to kill him someday and she’s only eleven – he’s not surprised when Marlene laughs at the name Dorcas Meadowes, a Ravenclaw whose bad side nobody should get on.

            She tells him about Alice from his house and about Harleen and Pat she shares her dorm room with, and about boys and girls from other houses she’s met. Marlene’s arsenal of friends is far greater than his – but it doesn’t include Lily.

            Or Evans, as he’s been trying to call her. They’re not friends.

            Marlene doesn’t ask about Evans and James doesn’t say, but he still thinks of her. The eleven-year-old James doesn’t know what being in love means or feels like, but it wouldn’t be how he feels towards her. But he doesn’t say it. He doesn’t mention it.

            He sees her in the passing once the winter break is over, and his mind doesn’t flash to her at the platform. He sees her as she is now – two inches taller than she was when they arrived, now two inches taller than him. Her red hair looks a little darker and it’s plaited in a long braid, and the freckles on her nose and cheeks are only a few remaining.

            In Potions, he still sits behind her, but now she’s only a nuisance – her hair sometimes gets bushy as it’s the first class in the morning on Monday and she’s especially cranky then, so she doesn’t brush it. It gets in the way of Slughorn and James sometimes finds himself falling asleep, only to be awakened by a kind Remus.

            Sirius enjoys the show, of course, and Peter is trying to pay attention.

            They’re headed to the library for studying—Remus wants to get some books to read as he’s starting to feel a little ill again, and wants to use the extra time in the hospital wing to deepen his knowledge—when they come across Snape. James wants to walk past him, Snape doesn’t interest him anymore and he’s too tired to start something.

            Peter’s the one to irk Snape that time, on Sirius’s nagging. They end up trying to hex one another and whereas Peter misses or fails or cannot even conjure up a simple attacking spell, Snape manages to tear Peter’s bag.

            Sirius hexes Snape in return, making him slip on his robe.

            “You’ve made a mess,” Remus tells them. He picks up some of the books from the floor, alongside the other two. Peter looks like his pride’s been wounded, so they let him just stand there. Remus pats him on the back with a sympathetic smile. “C’mon, we’re going fix it up in the library. There’s got to be a spell for that.”

            In the library, they’ve managed to find a way how to sew Peter’s bag back together, but it was after Remus transfigured a piece of paper into a needle and James paper cuts into a thread.

            “Can’t believe we’re doing this like _Muggles_ ,” Sirius says.

            Remus raises his eyes to meet his, and James thinks he can see his lips tighten. “They have a couple of clever tricks up their sleeves, too, you know.”

            Sirius mutters something incomprehensible. Peter isn’t sulking anymore, now actively helping Remus fix the bag. James is listing through the spell book, wondering which of these spells they’re ever going to learn.

            “You know,” Sirius says in a hushed voice; the librarian, Madam Pince has just warned them they’re being too loud. “I’ve had enough of Snape.”

            “I don’t like him, either,” says Peter.

            Sirius nods. “Well, anyway, he’s constantly attacking my friends. I’d attack his, but he doesn’t have any – just that Evans girl.”

            “And she’s not someone you’d like to get in a fight with, right, James?” Remus says.

            It’s the smallest of nods, but still a nod. James thinks of the time in the middle of the first semester, when he tried to prank her and it resulted in her giving him a lesson for nearly ten minutes before a prefect came in and took points from their own house. It might’ve been the first time she’s cost Gryffindor points and James doesn’t think it’s something she’ll ever forget.

            That has been the longest conversation he’s had with her so far. It’s been a while since he’s thought of her.

            He goes back to skimming through the pages and nobody mentions Evans anymore.

            In fact, she nearly completely slips his mind until it’s almost the end of their first year and exams are approaching. It’s one of the last matches, Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw, and he’s regretting his choice to sit with Marlene instead of the boys (they are very picky about ‘their’ spots at the bleachers). Dorcas Meadowes is there, loud as ever and as much of a Quidditch fanatic as himself.

            Poor Marlene is huddled between them, trying to lower the tensions while the two scream at one another and their teams respectively. It would be all right if Dorcas hasn’t brought Evans and her friend Alice out of nowhere just to prove him not all Gryffindors are as passionate as he is.

            Except she turns out to be wrong, because Evans and Alice are cheering for the Gryffindor team and the Chaser, Frank Longbottom, with an extensive knowledge of the sport. James joins them, Marlene stays neutral and Dorcas is passionate enough for all five of them.

            The game is nearing an end and the score is nearly a tie – one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty for Gryffindor. James, who has seen a fair share of Quidditch matches in his time, knows his house’s Seeker is not very good at what he does.

            So he tells Dorcas, “Your team is going to win. If you want, I bet you ten galleons.”

            And Dorcas says, “I’m not going to bet on my team’s loss! How do you know we’re going to win, anyway? Unless I’m badly mistaken and I doubt _that_ , Gryffindor are in the lead.”

            “But you are going to win,” James says.

            Dorcas opens her mouth to say something – protest, likely. Marlene is trying to concentrate on the game in front of her and Alice is screaming at all the players, but Evans is looking at James.

            No anger, no contempt, no scorn. Just a girl looking at a boy.

            “You’re going to win the match,” she tells Dorcas and her voice is high-pitched because she’s shouting, “but we’re going to win the championship.”

            There’s a smile exchanged between Evans and James, and he thinks it might be the first one ever. Dorcas says something but James doesn’t hear – for the briefest of moments, he thinks he has caught a glimpse of the Lily Evans from the platform.

            But then they’re back to being strangers, even after Ravenclaw loses but Gryffindor wins the cup.

            The school years ends with them not being on talking terms, not even on ‘hello’. She’s still friends with Snape and he’s still friends with all three boys he’s met that year and Marlene, who joins them in their compartment for about half an hour. Sirius is the reason she leaves, but the boys don’t mind. James thinks she might be in the compartment with Evans—they’ve grown quite friendly since the match—but doesn’t say anything.

            Evans is going to be no one for the next few months. He’s got more pressing matters to think about.

            Much like he’s planned, James spends most of the summer training Quidditch with Sirius, as they’re the only ones interested in getting onto the team. Remus sometimes comes to James’s as there’s a forest right behind his house where no one can see them, and they play Quidditch one-on-one with him as a referee. Peter is horrible, so he’s being the commentator.

            James loves the summer. Even when he’s with Marlene, mostly doing homework or going to Muggle film screenings—her Muggle mother has always made sure she’s educated in the ‘other world’ as well—and he enjoys it more than he likes to admit. He loves maps, especially, because they’re like a guide to the world and all the places he longs to see.

            Evans doesn’t cross his mind many times, but Remus’s illness does.

            He tells Sirius about it. They notice the pattern, the regular symptoms and compare it to the calendar – it doesn’t take long. When they tell Peter, the boy tells them he’s suspected for a while now, but hasn’t said anything. And when they finally tell Remus, he thinks they’re going to leave him.

            “There is nothing I feel like doing less than leaving you,” James tells him.

            They’re sitting on the rooftop of James’s tree house, looking upon the stars and the moon that is halfway through its phase. Nobody mentions it, but they’re all wondering what things are going to be like when it reaches its peak.

            Head hung low and fingers fiddling with one another, Remus looks sad. Miserable, even. But the boys are twelve and they’re not much good at comforting one another, so Peter says the only thing he can think of: “Maybe we can help you, somehow.”

            The smile on Remus’s face doesn’t do anything to hide his feelings. “You can’t. Unless you can cure it, then …”

            “We can always try,” Sirius says. “I think it’s a Gryffindor trait to be stupid and stubborn about things like these.”

            “Yeah,” agrees James, “we’re going to do something about it.”

            They don’t know what, yet. They’re just four boys staring at the moon, thinking how it changes one of them into a monster every time it’s full. Just four boys without a place in the world, except right here and right then.

            That is the first and last summer they feel like this.

            The second year begins in full swing, with the first deaths reported only days into it. Nobody talks about it, but James is sure they are all thinking about what’s going on. But they’re safe here – they’re safe at Hogwarts.

            It’s the last night of their first week when Remus decides to open out about his illness. He talks for nearly an hour, trembling as he does so and not one of them interrupts. It’s scarier for him than it is for them, in a way, because they know they’ve already made peace with whatever is going to happen for him. They’re going to stuck with him until the end, like it or not – and that’s exactly what they tell him.

            “You’re not a monster,” Peter tells him. It’s the first thing Peter does – out of them, he’s the most frightened, having grown up as the only son and shielded from all the bad in the world. “Monsters don’t think they’re monsters.”

            Remus shakes his head and James thinks he would’ve laughed if the situation was a little different. “Are you trying to say I’m not a monster because I think I am one?”

            “Yes.”

            “That’s the—”

            “Most brilliant thing someone can tell you,” Sirius interjects. He glares at Remus, but there’s not enough sternness in him to make it anything but compassionate. “Cut it off. You’ve got an illness and every illness has got a cure.”

            “Even if not a cure, then a way to lessen the symptoms,” says James. “Three mates who are with you every step of the way.”

            Remus looks at them for what feels the longest time and when he breaks out into a smile—weak, but genuine—they feel like they’ve changed something for him. And two weeks later, he says he doesn’t think it was so bad this time, because it’s the first time someone apart from his parents and Dumbledore knows and doesn’t think of him any different.

            It’s the first time James truly realizes what people mean when they say that words matter. He thinks of Evans, and thinks if his words still matter to her.

            James is older now, Marlene says, and James could grow a pair and talk to the mystery girl.

            She says so because she catches him looking where Evans sits while they are in the library, few tables away from her. She’s sitting with that greasy-haired friend of hers and they’re going through what seems to be a Potions textbook.

            James would like to say he doesn’t think of Lily Evans from the platform anymore, but that would be one of the biggest lies ever told.

            He doesn’t know what it is and he most certainly doesn’t want to mention it to anyone. Least of all, Marlene.

            “Me talking to her would be like Meadowes being actually nice for once.”

            Marlene laughs at that. “Dorcas knows how to be nice, sometimes. You’re not particularly nice to her, either.”

            James mumbles something unimportant. He nearly spills his ink, it remains clear in his memory, because Snape catches him glance at Evans and he grins a sly smile and somehow, just like James, Snape _knows_.

            He might’ve started a war a year ago, but it’s Snape who declares it right then and there.

            James doesn’t hold back the next time he sees him, but they’re only twelve and the damage is far from serious. If he wanted to be left alone, he wouldn’t have shown James he knows more than he lets in on. He wouldn’t have uncovered his weapon and make James unleash his.

            Years later, James thinks he might’ve imagined Snape looking at him like that. He remembers being angry at the world because there’s this girl he thinks is special and she hates him because he hates her best friend – and Snape is just there. Where he could’ve been, had he held his tongue.

            It gets a little different when James is given the Chaser position. He and the boys celebrate well into the night and Sirius says he’s going to apply next year – he’s not good enough to attempt already. It’s everything James thinks he’s ever wanted and there is nothing but Quidditch, Sirius, Peter and Remus on his mind that night.

            When he plays his first match against Slytherin and sees Evans sitting away from Snape, her auburn hair mixing with Marlene’s blonde, he nearly drops the Quaffle. He knows Marlene is cheering for him and Alice is cheering for Frank, the Chaser who’s a year above, and wonders who Evans is cheering for.

            “Potter!” comes the angry Longbottom's voice from several feet ahead. “Are you nesting the Quaffle to be its mother?!”

            James throws the Quaffle and dives to escape a Bludger, but all he can think about during his first Quidditch match ever is Lily Evans and the smile on her face when he scores his seventh goal.

            It makes him think maybe she doesn’t hate him, after all.

            Certainly, she doesn’t hate him as much as Meadowes does, he comes to realize several weeks later; it’s nearly a miracle when Marlene tells him she feels _threatened_ by his team this year. It’s mainly him she doesn’t like, but he takes it as a compliment, because Dorcas Meadowes doesn’t ever feel threatened by anyone. Place a dangerous knight in the queen’s close proximities and she’s got to be restless.

            He’s doing a bit on his metaphors that year because Longbottom tells him it’s a key to communicating to girls. And James likes chess.

            Evans doesn’t sit in front of him in Potions anymore, he notices when he enters the classroom on a November afternoon. She’s sitting with Alice, few rows behind, and doesn’t show there’s any difference at all.

            He hexed Snape the evening before. Things between them got bad and Snape might’ve earned himself a broken nose, while James spent the night awake with Remus trying to fix his ankle. Sirius’s knuckles were bleeding from when Snape used the disarming spell on him so he tried to attack with bare hands and missed, but they took care of that quickly.

            When Evans looks at him and he sees nothing but contempt, James wishes he could feel guilty for what he’s done. He thinks of his ankle, Sirius’s hands and any trace of regret vanishes.

            In the second half of their second year, James doesn’t think about her at all. She’s just someone Marlene’s with when Gryffindor plays versus Slytherin, or Slytherin plays versus Hufflepuff. He doesn’t notice when she changes seats on Transfiguration, moving from front row to back, or when she starts to turn in homework late.

            Evans means nothing to him and he doesn’t even notice.

            The war with Snape that spread onto the war with nearly all Slytherins from his year is still reigning, and more often than not one of his friends finds themselves by Snape’s friends. They start battles, end them, join them, lose them. It’s a constant cycle and everybody knows James Potter hates Severus Snape and Severus Snape hates James Potter.

            Lily doesn’t come into the equation.

            When the moon is full and there are three boys in the dorm room, they don’t say much. They stay awake all night browsing through books upon books upon books of spells and information and any kind of magic that might help them in making the turn easier for Remus.

            Peter likes not being seen. Sirius likes knowing where everyone is. James likes maps. Remus likes creating something out of nothing.

            They do it for him. It’s a late April night, it might be well after midnight, when Sirius closes his books and says: “I don’t think we can help him.”

            It sounds cruel, but James sighs and puts his book away because he knows what Sirius means. If wizards much more gifted than them couldn’t find a cure for centuries, there’s no possibility three thirteen-year-olds could do so.

            “What do we do then?”

            They don’t know it that night, or any of the following that Remus lies ill in the hospital bed, but it’s the beginning of something that would change and help save lives years from then. It sparks from Peter hiding when Snape encounters him in the hallways and he doesn’t have a wand near, and he says he wishes he knew he was coming. It sparks from Sirius trying to follow Amelia McDonald to find out how she can play Quidditch so well—he’s stating she’s using some juice to boost her skills—and never being able to find her. It sparks from Remus never knowing when he can go to the school premises after dark to get under the Whomping Willow. It sparks from James’s being sick of constantly getting lost and wanting to create his own map of Hogwarts.

            That year, they all get better results on their exams than anyone could’ve predicted. It’s the first time he and Remus tie for the second best student in the year, and Lily Evans gives James a side-eye nervous glance when she’s being threatened for her position of the best.

            James doesn’t notice that.

            “We’ve made it,” Remus tells them. They’re sitting in the compartment on their way home, and he still can’t wrap his head around being one of the five top students in the year. “How is that even possible?”

            Sirius, who looks as comfortable as it gets on the double seat he’s sharing with Peter, lets out a snort. “Don’t forget about us poor boys who are somewhere in the middle.”

            “You’re somewhere in the middle because you don’t want to be in the top,” Peter tells him. “I _can’t_ be in the top.”

            They’re quiet for a second; nobody knows what to say.

            Peter is, out of the four, the least intellectually gifted – he’s average. He gets better with studying, but it doesn’t come easily to him like it does to James and Sirius, and he’s not motivated enough to get through it like Remus does.

            Sirius places a hand around his shoulder, and the room seems to loosen on its tension. “C’mon, mate, you’re doing all right. I can’t be in the top, either – see, I can’t afford to make my good ole fam proud. It would be a disgrace to everything I’ve done so far.”

            Three kinds of laugh follow. Peter’s is nervous, but cheerier than he looks. Remus’s is genuine and James guesses he’s thankful someone handled the situation. Sirius’s is loud and assertive, nothing like the usual. James doesn’t laugh, because he thinks of what he’s heard about the Blacks and he thinks that maybe Sirius isn’t telling them everything.

            He doesn’t think of Evans that summer, either, because now he’s starting to learn that there’s much to each of his friends he doesn’t know.

            Marlene takes him to the movies more often. For her birthday, she invites a bunch of people from school and they have a movie marathon with many films he’s never seen. His friends are invited, too, because Marlene doesn’t hate them—not even Sirius—as much as she pretends to, and he knows the feelings are mutual.

            He leaves early. Marlene notices something is wrong, but James can’t tell her about Remus’s illness or how he doesn’t think Sirius considers his family a home. He can’t tell her that maybe Peter doesn’t feel like a real part of their group, because sometimes he stands aside and it takes them a while to pull him into the conversation because he’s not contributing or sharing their excitement.

            So, he says, “I feel like something bad is about to happen.”

            Marlene listens. “Like what?”

            “People are dying,” he reminds her; quietly, as if he were telling a secret. “Peter’s dad is on the field more than ever and Peter’s worried, which means something bad is going on. And my mum, she spends a lot of time in the hospital and sometimes I see her only for a few hours each day.”

            They don’t say that things have already started getting bad, because that’s not something two thirteen-year-olds should. James and Marlene should be getting their first crushes, into their first relationships, worry about friends and grades and simple gossip.

            Marlene places an arm around his shoulders. She doesn’t seem mad about him ruining her day, and James doesn’t know if he feels happy about it. The relationship they have—the friendship that has been set in stars the moment their fathers attended Hogwarts together—is different than the one he has with the boys.

            James is thankful he has her.

            “It’s going to be over soon,” she tells him. They’re sitting on the rooftop of his tree house, because she needed to come to see him as soon as the last guest left. “We’re safe, safest when we’re at Hogwarts.”

            “Yeah.” They are.

            He smiles; James doesn’t think about things getting worse for a long time again.

            He thinks about Sirius and Peter and Remus and when he invites them over, Sirius doesn’t come. James is given a half-assed lie he’s not feeling well and needs to rest. He gets angry, because he thinks he deserves the truth – and he’s angry all until he realizes that maybe it’s not Sirius who doesn’t want to be here.

            “Maybe it’s his parents,” James says aloud. “Maybe they’re not letting him come over.”

            Remus starts asking questions and James barely gets away with a half-assed lie, the exact same thing he got mad about only minutes before. Peter doesn’t say anything until the two are done, and is the person who makes everything normal again. But without Sirius, they’re not whole, and James can’t help but worry about him.

            He doesn’t make a scene in the end, but makes Sirius promise to come over as soon as he can. When he does, about two weeks later, he looks a little worn out but says it’s from all the cleaning work they’re doing around the house. Aside from that, nothing’s changed.

            The atmosphere is different at the platform that year. Subconsciously, James notes Evans’s sister hasn’t come to see her off and that Snape isn’t waiting for her outside the train, like he did the previous year.

            Sirius doesn’t look happy when James catches a glimpse of him talking to his mother. They seem to be arguing and James doesn’t want to intrude, but watching them makes him feel like he should do something, so he talks to Remus while they wait around.

            “Hullo, males,” Sirius greets them, each with a pat on the back. “How’s it going?”

            Remus eyes him up and down. “Who are you and what have you done to the moody Sirius Black? Is he a Muggle now?”

            “Rude. I may be moody, but you are certainly _moony_ ,” replies Sirius. He begins to laugh at his own joke, then his eyes widen. “Moony! Of course!”

            “Please, no,” groans Remus. “Don’t call me that.”

            But Sirius does, since then until either of them can recall. Peter joins them and they get him in on the joke, and much of the ride to Hogwarts is spent trying to come up with nicknames for each of them. None are as great as Remus’s, so they let it slide.

            James thinks how happier Sirius is than he was during summer. He wonders if it has anything to do with his family, but decides it’s none of his business until Sirius tells him so.

            That’s the year they become known as the pranksters of Hogwarts. It’s also the year they come up with the prototype of a design for a map that would tell everyone’s location inside Hogwarts in real time, and also the year they inch closer to making Remus’s monthly turns easier – they discover Remus is more content spending time with animals when he is a werewolf than humans.

            Also, the year McGonagall catches them wandering under James’s newly-received invisibility cloak.

            “What are you four doing out of bed,” she says a little distressed, because last time she turned around they weren’t there and _now they are_ , “you – you – you marauders!”

            “Nothing, Professor,” James tells her. “We were just wandering around.”

            “Marauding around,” says Sirius. It earns them two weeks’ worth of detention, but also the name.

            They call themselves the Marauders and the map of Hogwarts they’re going to create becomes known as the Marauders’ Map. It’s a legendary year in all the stories not concerning Evans, because that’s the year when they went from being relative unknowns—except James, the Chaser—to pranksters of the year. Sirius also gets to be a Beater that season and Peter is the commentator when Dirk Cresswell is playing for Hufflepuff.

            And maybe the craziest of them all, Marlene becomes friends with Dorcas Meadowes and Lily Evans during a study group. Part of the same friendship group are a Slytherin Alice McDonald and Alice Lightwood – who finally started dating Frank Longbottom after the final match of the year when he wins the cup, Gryffindor’s third year in the row.

            That’s the year when James doesn’t think about Lily Evans as he sees her now or about Lily Evans from the platform.

            He thinks about Snape and all the curses and hexes they’ve learned that year, whether from books or on lessons, or the ones Snape’s dragged out of Merlin-knows-where. He thinks about bruises and sore muscles, about headaches and broken arms and wrists players on both sides have earned, and he thinks the war’s only getting worse each year.

            Both the war between Gryffindor and Slytherin, but the one outside their small world, too. There are rumours of a dark wizard rising and killing quietly, and rumours of more and more Hogwarts students joining him upon graduation – Slytherins, namely.

            It makes James uneasy that some people he’s gotten used to seeing for the past three years are now on his side.

            But still, James doesn’t think about the war a lot because his parents don’t allow him to. His father makes him fix his own tree house the Muggle way, with sawing the wood until he’s covered in sawdust and there’s a plank before him. He’s got homework he does with Marlene, and all the movies he’s got to see, and the nice girl from the neighbourhood—Quinn—he has a thing with.

            He’s busy with teenage things.

            “I’ll come over for a few days,” is the letter that changes things for James. It’s from Sirius and it’s more serious than anything he’d expect to receive. James quickly scribbles an agreement, a permission even though he knows he doesn’t need to send it, and Sirius doesn’t need to get it to know he’s welcome anytime he wants.

            Sirius comes later that night, and it’s the beginning of August and he looks worn out.

            They don’t talk about why he came. James doesn’t want to begin the topic and Sirius doesn’t want to tell him, so they pretend it didn’t happen. Whatever it was.

            Marlene comes over when her parents go to Malibu for two weeks, and James is kicked out of his room and sleeps with Sirius in the guest room. His father conjured up another bed for him and his mother is rarely home anymore. They don’t speak about the war, either, and they don’t speak about how James was rude to Evans when she tried to scold him for firing out on Snape the very last day of their third year.

            James feels like the list of what they don’t talk about grows bigger every time he wakes.

            As his parents are out of the premises most of the day, the three have the house entirely for themselves. They spend Marlene’s birthday by inviting nearly half the school over and it’s the wildest birthday party James has ever been to, resulting in even Sirius making out with Alice MacDonald’s older sister, Mary.

            James finds Evans in his room.

            It’s unexpected, but somehow it feels like he should’ve known this would happen.

            She’s standing over his bed, looking at the photographs he has spread over his walls. They’re full of him and the rest of the Marauders, and Marlene and even some with Meadowes from when she came over to Marlene’s and they were nice to one another, for once. Some are with his parents and there’s one with his uncle, Robert, and there are few he has from when he attended classes at a nearby Muggle school when he was younger.

            “I didn’t mean to …” She doesn’t end the sentence, because they both know it’s a lie.

            James doesn’t know what to do.

            Evans looks around and her eyes settle on him; he can’t read them. There’s something close to a smile on her face, but it looks nothing like the one time she smiled at him during a Quidditch match.

            “I thought your room would be colder,” she says.

            “I thought you weren’t nosy.”

            Evans bites her lip and gives a soft nod. “I just wanted to see if you really are that cruel.”

            James flinches; the words leave a scarring somewhere he can’t see. They shouldn’t, because she’s nothing to him. He’s believed she’s nothing to him. But if she is, then why does it hurt so much?

            He walks towards her then takes a photograph of him, Sirius, Remus and Peter. “I’m not cruel. It’s your friend who started hexing us first. See these people?” He holds up the photograph in front of her face. “They’re my best friends. They’ve bled for him, had their bones broken and been embarrassed because of him. I’m not cruel.”

            Evans looks away. In his mind, he calls her Lily.

            When she looks back at him, the Evans he’s gotten used to is back. “Just because he’s defending himself doesn’t mean you’re not the one scarring him, too.”

            James is shaking now; anger, fury, jealousy, disappointment, anger towards himself – they all mix and James feels like he’s going to burst. “This is my room, Evans. My private space. You’ve got nothing to do here and the least of all, you should have enough dignity not to be rude while you’re being _my_ guest.”

            “I’m not your guest,” Evans says on her way out and pride in her eyes. “I’m Marlene’s.”

            This doesn’t hurt, but when she slams the door, it does.

            Sirius stays for the rest of the summer and he and Marlene don’t seem to hate one another so much anymore. James has even gotten used to Meadowes occasionally bursting into his home with fast food—Meadowes is Muggle-born—and actually forcing the three of them to spend time with her.

            That year, he feels like the platform for Hogwarts Express is colder. There are fewer people laughing and chattering and more serious faces, worried and weary. He pretends he doesn’t see and walks with straight back and chin held high, because he knows his father is looking. He says goodbye and promises to be good, but somehow James knows this year is going to be different.

            Sirius waits for him in the last compartment, where they sat with Evans three years before. Peter and Remus join sometime later, and they talk as if nothing has happened. When he goes to look for Marlene and give her the bag she’s left at his place, he finds her sitting with Evans and the Alices.

            Marlene is nice to him. The Alices give him a nod. Evans glares at him and he glares back.

            The rest of the year passes the same as the one before. The Marauders are reigning as the school’s pranksters and their main resource is Peeves, and it feels like they’re lifting the school’s spirits. When one of the midterm exams is postponed—Arithmancy, James thinks—there’s a short celebration in the Gryffindor hall before everybody goes to study again. Evans stays there long enough to give him a scolding look and when he cheers her with a Butterbeer, she turns and walks away in the same manner as Snape does.

            Snape doesn’t leave him alone and neither they do leave him. It’s getting more vigorous each time they meet, and sometimes it’s during Potions with Slytherin that they taunt one another and ruin each other’s potion.

            James knows Evans is looking. He knows she’s judging him, thinking of the boy she saw in the photographs and trying to find him. He knows she’s aware that near Snape, that boy is buried somewhere deep and there’s only the James that thinks Snape’s main problem is that he was ever born.

            They nearly finish the Map that year and they discover that they could turn into animals—become animagi—to help Remus, whose turns have gotten worse as he entered puberty. Their grades marvel as they study magic far more advanced than the one they should, and it’s only History of Magic Remus is the only one who cares about.

            That year, James is at his worst. He’s dating and then he’s not and then he is again, and he’s never serious, never fully attached because every girl he dates becomes a target for Snape’s friends. Longbottom becomes Captain and he’s another target; Mary MacDonald has an and on-again-off-again thing with Sirius and Snape’s buddies get her cornered more than once. James likes to think Marlene hasn’t been their target because of Meadowes – no one dares corner Meadowes.

            Sirius says hurting Evans would be perfect payback. James shuts him down immediately, but the war has been engraved in all four of them enough that he knows his word means nothing when all the teenage hormones are at his highest and the thirst for revenge so fresh.

            So he grabs her after Transfiguration on a Monday morning and drags her into an empty classroom.

            She’s protesting, loud as ever, and he’s waiting for her to stop. When she does, he takes a deep breath and thinks of Lily Evans from the platform. It gives him enough strength to betray his friends.

            “Stay with Meadowes as much as you can,” he tells her. “You’re Snape’s best friend. He’s been attacking people who have done nothing to him for months now, and some think it’s time we start playing the war by his rules.”

            “What war?” asks Lily. He feels like she’s heard nothing he told her, or at least hasn’t grasped the meaning of his words. “It’s just you attacking him and Severus defending himself. Of course he’s going to go after you when all you do is bully him!”

            “Evans, for Merlin’s sake, _listen to me_. You’re not safe. Stay with Meadowes. She’s as much of neutral ground as one can be.”

            “I don’t need you looking after me.”

            “You don’t,” James says. _But someone has to_.

            She doesn’t listen to him and hangs out with Snape as she always does. It hasn’t been two weeks since their conversation when she ends up in the hospital wing, courtesy of some sixth-year Gryffindor whom Snape had gotten earlier that day. James doesn’t visit her, or tell her anything when she recovers. But when he notices she starts hanging around Meadowes more, he feels like he can breathe again.

            War gets serious that year.

            He comes home for the summer and his parents’ faces are grim. They look at Sirius with a different kind of sympathy and tell him they’re looking forward to having him over as long as he wants, if he wants. They say the same to all his friends.

            When they arrive home, his father tells him the truth.

            They denied serving him. They didn’t accept any of his offers. They’re blood traitors now and that’s just as safe as Muggle-borns. His mother is going to continue working at Mungo’s and his father is going to continue working for his company, but they don’t want James spending a lot of time alone, or even at other people’s places.

            James doesn’t sleep well that night, or any other that follows. Sirius arrives a month into the summer and he tells him that the situation at home isn’t well, because his parents don’t want him hanging out with James.

            Peter’s mother dies that year. Nobody knows who kills her – nobody cares enough to find out. It doesn’t matter, because more and more people are dying. Peter, too, comes over when his father starts drinking. Marlene’s brothers and father, who are all Aurors, send her to James’s as they don’t consider her safe there.

            War begins the year when they are fifteen. That summer, they swear to do something about it. Dorcas Meadowes is there and Remus has come over, and Alice Lightwood stays the night with Frank. When Marlene invites Evans, he doesn’t complain.

            James greets her warmly.

            “Marlene invited me,” she blurts out. It sounds as if she’s apologizing.

            “I told her to,” says James. It’s the truth, but he knows she doesn’t believe it.

            She stays for the week, along with everyone else who’s not staying the rest of the summer. James likes it she’s here, because they’re fifteen and they know shit about protecting themselves against real threats and if they’re all in one place, if they come for one of them, they’re going to get through all of them.

            They don’t know it yet, but it’s that summer that most of the Order of the Phoenix is created.

            James is only glad he knows Evans is safe. It’s when he sees her wake up from a nightmare and sitting in his tree house that he knows he’s seeing the Lily Evans from the platform. And he knows exactly who Lily Evans from the platform is – the girl he’s fallen in love with.

            During fifth year, James hears stories. He overhears Evans telling Marlene she’s worried about Snape’s intentions for future and he knows what Snape does to Mary MacDonald because somebody let the word out she and Sirius are official. Mary ends up in the hospital and Sirius ends up single, and it’s one of the worst periods of James’s life.

            He knows Snape hates him and whatever he does to him can be excused, going both ways. James is a blood traitor and Snape is a future death eater, so why the fuck not kill each other before they even get to play the field?

            James doesn’t want Evans to see how bad it can get. He doesn’t show the scars on his stomach he has from the night Snape attacked with a spell James has never heard of, but he’s sure Snape is showing the scar he has from when Sirius played a prank on him and would’ve gotten him killed had James not saved him.

            For war, both sides need to be included. Evans only cares about one.

            It’s obvious, now, that James likes her. Marlene points it out and Remus points it out and Sirius points it out and even bloody Meadowes points it out, so James nearly loses it when he points out that Marlene and Sirius are _obviously_ having something going on.

            It’s the first time he and Sirius fight. It’s forgotten by the time they wake up in the morning, but it stings to know Marlene might be targeted double as she’s both James’s best friend and Sirius’s girlfriend.

            Remus grows more serious that year. Peter grows quieter. Sirius grows more reckless. James grows up.

            It’s the year the Marauders’ Map is perfected and the year they become animagi. It’s the year Lily Evans stops hanging out with Severus Snape because he calls her Mudblood and it’s the year James starts protecting her from Slytherins when she isn’t looking.

            It’s the year they start preparing for a war they’re bound to fight in once they graduate.

            The summer is no better and especially when Sirius comes over with bruises and cuts and pours James his heart out. He says nothing to Marlene, playing the strong man he always does, but James now knows the abuse Sirius has faced and doesn’t think he could ever look at his family the same.

            Sirius becomes his brother that summer. He’s not going back to that house, ever again, James’s parents swear.

            One of Marlene’s brothers is killed by a Death Eater. Dorcas loses her mother and somehow finds solace in Remus. James is worried sick for Evans— _Lily_ , he begins calling her again—but she still hates him.

            Their sixth year is when Dorcas and Marlene are subject to a curse and shipped to his mother’s care in the hospital, and James hates the world. He’s crying and exhausted and all of his friends are the same. It’s the year James is all alone for the first time in the world, and he’s trying to breathe at the top of the Astronomy tower when Lily finds him. Lily, the perfect prefect, just like Remus is.

            James doesn’t ask how she found him. They sit there in silence and James isn’t even trying to hide how much he really looks like shit.

            “I’m sorry,” Lily says. “For calling you cruel.”

            His mind flashes to all the times he’s hurt Slytherins, all the times he’s made Snape bleed and all the times he was responsible for so much pain. He shakes his head, because she’s right. How long did it take to escalate to this point? How easily could’ve he been the one to hurt someone like they hurt Dorcas and Marlene?

            “No,” says James. “I’m a monster.”

            She doesn’t say anything to that. They leave together, an hour later, and when they wake up in the morning it’s almost like nothing’s happened.

            When they get the news Marlene is not getting any better and Dorcas comes back, and James is still not talking to any of his friends, Lily finds him at the top of the Astrology tower again.

            This time, James asks.

            “Marlene said this is where you always come when you need time to think,” she answers.

            They don’t talk much that night. James has been letting Slytherins hex him and curse him and he starts talking to his friends again only when things escalate and James isn’t defending himself; Snape fires and fires and fires and James is bleeding— _oh my god there’s so much blood—_ and they save his life.

            Marlene comes back a week later. Lily now goes to the Astronomy tower almost every night.

            Nothing is the same ever again.

            That summer, everyone is at his place. Everyone is scared and lost and when James’s father gets sick, things feel worse than they possibly could. Lily is his friend now, and so is Dorcas and Alice and Frank and Remus and Sirius and Peter and Marlene and they’re all he has when Fleamont dies.

            Lily holds his hand at the funeral.

            Marlene’s other brother goes missing. Nobody thinks he’ll show up ever again.

            They have two years before they join the war.

            On their way to Hogwarts that year, fewer students are boarding the train. The situation is getting worse and their compartment is now filled with more people than should be there, but Dorcas performs an enlargement charm so they fit in.

            They are sixteen years old and they are scared.

            Lily still doesn’t know he is an Animagus and neither does she know he sneaks out once a month to make company to Remus’s werewolf form. She knows about the Map and the Invisibility Cloak and they use it together, to sneak out to the Astronomy tower when either he or she doesn’t think they can take it anymore.

            That’s where Lily tells him the truth.

            “I hated you because you hated my best friend.” It’s cold and they’re freezing so James summons some sweaters from the open window of his dorm room. “I knew he fought back, but I always thought you did it because you were bored. And then I saw those photographs in your room and I thought you’re maybe different. But you weren’t and I hated you for that. So when Marlene got attacked and I needed someone to talk to, someone who knew her as much as I did, and I looked for you up here, I realized that you’re not the person I pictured you as.”

            “I’m a wuss,” James said.

            “You’re human,” Lily replied. “That night, you said you’re a monster. But you’re not. You just made some mistakes. We all do.”

            James thinks about kissing her that night. He thinks of her holding his hand at the funeral. He thinks of her looking at the photographs. He thinks of her at the platform. He thinks of never letting her go, and swears he won’t.

            Sirius and Marlene are still together and so are Dorcas and Remus. It’s the Christmas party in the Great Hall for the last day of the term, and it’s one of the only times he thinks school hasn’t succumbed to the overall spirit of the nation.

            He dances with Lily that night. He holds her close and he just goes for it. Right before he kisses her, he sees the same glint in her eyes.

            That night, James _knows_.

            They finish the year together and take a long time to say goodbye at the platform. He doesn’t want to let her go because Muggle-borns are being targeted more than ever and more than anything else, he wants to see her safe. She promises to come over for a week or two during summer.

            That summer, Frank Longbottom joins the Aurors.

            That summer, Marlene doesn’t go home.

            That summer, Peter becomes depressed.

            That summer, James finds Sirius drowned in alcohol and Marlene nearly breaks up with him.

            They haven’t even fought the war and it’s killing them already.

            Their last year at Hogwarts is miserable. James and Lily are Head Boy and Head Girl and James feels responsible for everything that happens. They’re each other’s tether and he doesn’t think he could get through everything without her. When he admits to her that he’s an Animagus she’s impressed and he tells her he loves her.

            It’s a surprise when she says it back.

            Marlene and Sirius break up because he’s not okay anymore. Dorcas and Remus are going strong, but everything is shaking nowadays. James isn’t sure they’re going to survive the war. Alice and Frank get engaged and elope during Christmas break; it’s the only happy news they get all year.

            They’re all wounded and scarred. But the year ends and they go to Dumbledore because they’re ready to fight a war they’ve sworn to win. They’re strong and scared and young, but he accepts their offer because they need everyone they can get.

            Lily and James face the enemy during their first official date – he attacks a café and there’s more dead than they can count, and the only reason why they survived is that he found it pathetic when Lily tried to jump in to save James.

            They go unharmed and he proposes to her that night. Shortly after, they learn Peter was nearby and he was tortured – he’s not sure he wants to fight anymore.

            Sirius tries to find the enemy on his own, trying to end it on his own terms. He doesn’t succeed and he’s scarred both physically and mentally, and Marlene nearly dies trying to save him. Many do, on both sides – it’s the worst fight he and James have ever had.

            James makes him promise he won’t fight anymore. He makes Peter promise, too.

            When he and Lily get married, it’s quiet. His mother takes her to the altar because Lily’s family cut all ties with her, and he loves her more than ever at that moment. They don’t have time for a lot of fun, but it might be the last party for a long time.

            Lily sprains her ankle when they are working on his treehouse, so he takes her to the hospital because his never healed. They are attacked and the wandless Lily attacks some Death Eaters with bare hands, pushing her fists into their noses and stomachs. She manages to take out three of four by the time she goes down, and James brings her back to consciousness.

            They are still there when he comes. James fights, vigorously, and Lily attacks him with another man’s wand.

            He laughs in their faces when one of his followers brings out James’s mother and he unleashes green lightning upon her.

            James tries to kill him. He earns himself seven scars that night and Lily earns four, but the ones on the inside are sealed.

            When they come home, Marlene is waiting for them and she’s shouting. James can’t hear half of it, but she gets the gist – Marlene is waiting for a baby, or maybe Lily is, she doesn’t know because they’ve both taken the test.

            Sirius comes over. Marlene hasn’t told him because it was supposed to be a one-time thing. But Sirius confesses he loves Marlene and when it turns out the positive test is Lily’s, he doesn’t love her any less.

            James wishes he could be happy. He doesn’t think he knows what that means anymore.

            He mourns his mother and all of Marlene’s family and promises Sirius to be his child’s godfather. Marlene and Sirius aren’t going to get married and neither are Dorcas and Remus, but James thinks they’re still all young.

            The third time they face him, it’s Dorcas’s house that has the Death Mark. James dies a little that night, because he doesn’t know if it’s her or Remus, or even Lily who is staying there for the weekend because Dorcas needs help decorating.

            He finds Remus crying over Dorcas’s body. There’s no time for him to mourn and he moves further into the house, further into the smoke that’s choking him.

            Lily is holding his own against him. His hands are around her neck but she’s still fighting. James raises his wand and attacks with the fury of so many deaths behind his back and attacks until there is a hole in the wall where once stood the enemy.

            They mourn Dorcas next. It doesn’t feel real.

            They agree if it’s a girl, she’ll be named after her.

            When Lily gives birth, they’re happy; Remus is somewhere in the house and so is Peter, but they’re not in the same dimension. Sirius and Marlene hold the baby next, and it’s Marlene who gives him the name.

            Harry. After her oldest brother – the first one to die in the war.

            They hear Alice gave birth few days prior and few days later, they hear of the prophecy. He’s after their son. They go into hiding, they leave everything they’ve been building, and they don’t trust Remus enough to make him the secret keeper. He’s a shell of a person and they can’t even help him.

            They choose Sirius. Then Sirius declines and they choose Peter. And it’s all good for several months, and they’re happy. Remus is getting better and Sirius and Marlene are bringing their relationship to a more stable level, and Peter is less afraid than he used to be. Frank and Alice are still doing fine, from what they hear, but Mary and Alice MacDonald are killed.

            James is as happy as one can be after he’s lost so much.

            So when he opens that door on Halloween 1981, James thinks of Lily Evans from the platform. He thinks of everything he’s been through, and a part of him smiles – because it’s such a _wonderful_ life. And he doesn’t close his eyes when the man hesitates because James is not going down without a fight. And his fingers form a fist and before he knows it, before either of the men standing at the Potters’ porch knows it, there is a wand lying on the ground.

            They both hesitate this time, but James is ready. His fist smashes into the man’s nose with as much force as he could muster; he stumbles, James punches. He falls, James punches. He tries to say something, but James is punching until he is knocked out cold.

            And only then does he call for Lily.

            And when she comes, dark red hair and aghast face upon her husband and the man bleeding beneath him, does James take a breath.

            “James,” begins Lily. Her eyes glance at the man and James in intervals; her hands are trembling.

            “We should get him inside,” James says.

            Lily nods and they drag him into the house, throw him into the basement – neither of them is very concerned about any other injuries he might get. They’re silent as they tie him up to a chair, like James has seen in the Muggle movies so many times – it’s a miserable way for a lord to sit.

            They’ve put his wand away. Lily’s alerted Dumbledore and Harry’s asleep, so they’re waiting. Watching.

            Voldemort doesn’t wake.

            James takes Lily’s hand in his; it’s still trembling. “I got him your way,” he says. “Muggle way.”

            The irony in his statement amuses him, and he smiles at her. The sheepish smile, the shy one he’s reserving only for truest moments. Not a hint of pride in it, just a twenty-one-year-old boy who’s starting to realize what he’s done.

            He begins getting scared, for the first time that night. Lily knows it, so Lily kisses him, _hard._ And James knows why he wasn’t afraid.

 

 


End file.
